Alignment of collagen nanofibers in 2D substrates using cyclic stretch

Abstract

This paper presents a new method to fabricate 2-dimensional collagen sheets whose internal molecular structures form highly-aligned nanofibers in one direction. In this work, collagen nanofibers are self-aligned in fully 2-dimensional substrates by applying cyclic stretch during the gelation process of collagen solution, and the fabricated collagen sheets induce the alignment of cells without any mechanical force within the cultivation period.